October 2018
Prague Appeal from Coimbra Group, Europaeum, LERU, UNICA and Charles University regarding concerns about the European Education, Research and Innovation landscape and EU funding in the current political climate.
As European organisations of universities, we express our concern regarding recent political developments and discussions, potentially leading to a division of the existing European Education, Research and Innovation landscape and its associated EU funding schemes. We want to stress that the European Education and Research Areas can only develop and flourish further by remaining open to cross-border and international cooperation, regardless of the local political situation and constraints. This includes the mobility of students, teachers, researchers, academic staff and their families, as one of the crucial elements of open and excellent European Education and Research Areas.
We call on the EU decision makers to ensure that the future European programmes, Erasmus and Horizon Europe, will continue to allow, and even further develop, Education and Research agreements with non-EU countries. In particular, a ‘Europe First’ approach is genuinely undesirable.
We believe that open European Education and Research Areas are the only solution to address both European and global challenges to the benefit of citizens and democratic societies.
Signed by
Prof. Ludovic Thilly (Chair of Coimbra Group), Prof. Luciano Saso (President UNICA), Dr Hartmut Mayer (Acting Director, The Europaeum), Prof Kurt Deketelaere (Secretary General LERU), Prof Tomas Zima (Rector of Charles University)
This was signed on the occasion of the Rectors’ Conference, Charles University, Prague 24-25 October 2018 which included presentations from leading names in academia across Europe. Watch a Video (YouTube) which includes an interview with the Europaeum’s Acting Director Dr Hartmut Mayer
There are three videos from the Rectors’ Conference:
Feature Video (overview) with interviews: https://youtu.be/EpWvwdVTNn4
Two long videos, streaming the main part of the conference:
https://youtu.be/kjq7h2akU9A
https://youtu.be/Hf6utD6bYAU
